New York, New York #9
“It is,” he said. He put his mouth directly beside her ear. “If you had, I would have locked the door and made you come harder than I did in my bathroom in L.A.”
AJ gasped.
Two.
He pulled back, meeting her eyes as his hand slipped into her panties.
“Miami almost broke me.”
He drew in a sharp breath as he felt her contract, and once more, his lips were on hers.
“You looked so pretty,” he muttered, delicately teasing her with his fingertip. “Then I watched you hug everyone but me, and I figured I’d done something to make you uncomfortable.”
“You didn’t,” said AJ. “I was trying to not be a dick.” She bit her lip at the stroke of his thumb.
“So was I,” said Noah. “I felt like such a fucking creep show, Age. We’re standing there talking about fan blogs as if I didn’t wake up that morning thinking about exactly how you feel.”
He kissed her, his free hand gripping her scalp. AJ arched against him, panting.
“I was doing okay until Risa took down your hair.” He groaned. “Your hair is mine, and I am an absolute caveman about it. I am. I hate that it’s down in the show. I hated watching it go down backstage for all those people to see. I really hated not being able to touch it.”
He broke off, burrowing into her now extremely staticky hair. That was his problem. AJ was maintaining normal brain activity while his other hand was actively setting her on fire.
“Backstage, we were two feet apart, and I was just staring at you, wanting to die. Then you turned to me, and suddenly I had you, I fucking had you in my hands.”
As his tongue swept into her mouth, he slipped two fingers inside her. She moaned, and Noah broke away, kissing her neck.
“You were a wreck and there were fifteen hundred people on the other side of that curtain, and all I could think was There’s no one here to stop me. Like a full-on creep show caveman.”
“You were not a creep show caveman.” AJ would have laughed, but she could barely speak for the pleasure of his touch. “You really helped me that day.”
Noah did laugh. “I helped myself,” he said. “You just didn’t notice. That whole time, my hands were in your hair. I almost didn’t let you go. I really, really didn’t want to.”
“But you did.”
“Yes, I did,” he said. “You smiled at me, and I remembered I fucking love you more than life.”
He kissed her hard, and AJ tightened around his fingers.
Three.
He stood, stripping out of his own clothes in the firelight, his skin golden and black with shadow. He was fully aroused, and for a moment all AJ could think was that this room had no drapes and the walls were made of windows.
Then he knelt down between her legs, nudging them open with his knees, and she didn’t care anymore. He pulled into her slowly, but he didn’t move. His hand swept over her face, then settled on the rug beside her. He was holding himself at bay.
“When we were younger,” he said. To test his resolve, AJ moved against him and watched. His eyes sank closed, but he didn’t budge.
“When we used to dance together,” he said, strain in his voice as AJ ground against him in frustration. She felt him pulse, but he held his hips steady.
“It would have been easy. Sometimes, I actually felt you go limp in my arms. I still dream about this one time—we were alone, and you got this look like you were close. Like if I just held on to you a little longer, let you feel me—”
AJ groaned, squeezing against him. “Why didn’t you?”
Noah closed his eyes. “Because you trusted me, and I didn’t want to mess with that,” he said. His eyes opened, bleary. “And I thought we had all the time in the world.”
He gasped as AJ increased her speed, fucking him from beneath, but still he didn’t move. “I’ve never understood it,” he said. “I’ve always liked you so much, but the way I want you isn’t nice at all. It’s brutal and relentless, and you were so young. I didn’t want to scare you—”
“Because you’re a good guy,” said AJ, panting.
“I was a goddamn saint,” said Noah, and finally he moved in her, just once, and—
Four.
AJ was lava as he began to roll his hips into hers. He pushed one of her knees back so that he could get closer, and AJ raked her fingers through his hair. He groaned as their lips met, and AJ could feel him slowing down to get ahold of himself. AJ couldn’t have that.
“You were right,” she whispered. “That time we were alone, I was close.”
“How close?” he said, his voice tight.
AJ raised herself up to his ear. “This wasn’t my first accident.”
“Oh fuck—”
Five.
They were rarely apart for more than an hour; when one was doing something, the other inevitably joined. Taking out the trash, changing sheets, and retrieving mail all became two-person jobs. Even the most mundane chore felt like a party when they were doing it together.
One night, when AJ volunteered to walk Bud, Noah somehow wound up with them. They strolled through the garden slowly because Bud was old, and because she had a lot of important things to sniff. When the dog looked up at Noah as if to say Carry me, he squatted to retrieve her.
As Bud curled up in his arms, Noah threw AJ an amused look. “You are staring at my legs.”
AJ blushed in the twilight. “I am not.” She absolutely was. She loved them—and beyond that, she loved that she had landed in a version of existence where she got to see them in gym shorts.
“It’s okay to like a bit of exposed leg,” Noah teased. “You’re like a horny Victorian. It’s cute.”
AJ wanted to crawl inside her hope chest. “I was looking at Bud,” she said defiantly. “How long have you been her royal palanquin bearer?”
Noah petted the dog tenderly. “Forever,” he said. “Of course, she does tire more easily, now that she’s ancient. Thirteen.”
“Remember how you almost didn’t keep her,” AJ mused.
Noah looked up, his eyes suddenly serious. “I think about that at least once a day.”
His intensity took AJ’s breath away. “You’ve given her a great life,” she finally managed.
Noah considered her. “You’re just saying that because she has an unrestricted view of my ankles.”
AJ punched him in the arm, and they started walking back.
“It’s okay to have a favorite body part,” he said conversationally. “I have several.”
As Bud slept in his arms, he bent down and whispered them in her ear.
Noah had originally signed on to shoot a film that July but had backed out of all commitments until the fall in view of Eudora’s illness. Even so, he was extremely in demand following his Oscar win. Several times a week, scripts arrived from Ned for him to read.
Noah would review them on the patio in an hour or two, and most of the time, AJ would find them in the recycling or in Errol’s office, stacked next to the fireplace for kindling.
Occasionally, he would ask her to read one for her opinion, and AJ actually thought a few were pretty good.
But Noah didn’t seem overly eager to jump into his next project, and AJ couldn’t blame him.
He had been pushing himself nonstop for the past decade to reach this point in his career, and just as he had grasped it, he’d lost Eudora, his last close family member and main support.
Mostly, he seemed distracted by the obvious upside of this, which was that Eudora’s death had miraculously returned AJ to him, but occasionally, AJ would catch him looking pensive or standing near her preferred spot in the drawing room.
“I don’t know if it just hasn’t hit me yet or what,” he said to AJ after one such occasion. “It still feels like she’s here—like she might walk through the door any minute.”
He hadn’t spoken much about the end, but it couldn’t have been easy.
AJ had concluded this mostly because Noah wouldn’t go near Eudora’s room.
From the outside, it looked tidy enough, and AJ knew it was immaculate, because once a week a crew of cleaners descended on Drew House to combat entropy, but whatever had happened in there, Noah wished to avoid it.
Which was how Eudora’s room became AJ’s office.
Noah had an impish streak as a lover, and nothing brought this out more than AJ trying to concentrate.
The first time she brought her computer to the drawing room to work on the novel adaptation, he turned up innocently with one of his model kits.
Within twenty minutes, the screen on AJ’s laptop had gone dark as Noah went down on her, the model kit forgotten nearby.
The second time this happened, AJ was in the kitchen working at the island. He sauntered in, fresh from a run, and poured himself a water from the fridge.
“What’s that?” He nodded to her laptop, still panting slightly.
“The screenplay that’s due in twelve days,” she said without looking up.
“Oh, right,” he said. AJ could hear that telltale note in his voice.
“I have to do this,” she said, still avoiding his gaze.
“I know,” he said respectfully.
Within five minutes, he was fucking her against the island.
AJ’s third attempt was on the patio, which was where Noah himself preferred to work.
This time, he called her inside for “help taking a leaf out of the dining room table,” and AJ wound up fucking him herself in one of the dining room chairs because it was so pathetically transparent, and because he smelled amazing, and because she could.
You couldn’t succeed at SNL and not work well under a deadline, but this was AJ’s first draft for these particular producers, and she needed to nail it. A week before it was due, AJ awoke at four a.m. in a blind panic; she was only halfway through the script. It was time to buckle down.
Eudora’s soft pink room was a mix of a Tudor royal’s bedchamber and Barbara Eden’s lamp from I Dream of Jeannie. It was also the one place Noah would not follow. As AJ stepped inside, she waited to feel fear or dread or ghoulishness; instead, she settled in and got right to work.
She progressed quickly over the next couple days, taking occasional breaks to poke around Eudora’s effects. She discovered that the floral perfume she favored was Red Door, by Elizabeth Arden, from the bottles on both her nightstand and vanity.